Learning to Count – Equal Pay Day

While learning how to count in elementary school …we also learned who counted.

Instructions in arithmetic, the school books informed the reader, were geared “to help the pupil appreciate the ways in which numbers function in the activities of daily life” and the authors of these mid-century elementary schoolbooks hoped “to give pupils real life problems to solve, problems they would encounter in real life.

Uneven Division

The real problem was the discrepancies between the sexes just didn’t add up.

While Bobby earned $1 for a days work, poor Betsy earned only 77 cents.

Learning to Count

Vintage School Book Illustration “Arithmetic We Need” 1955

Today is officially Equal Pay Day

The idea of a gender based wage gap today seems as antiquated as these vintage arithmetic school book illustrations.

April 8 is the day that the average woman’s wages finally catch up to the average mans earning from the year before. Women have to work 3 extra months into 2014 before wages were as much as mens were at the close of 2013.

More or Less

Vintage Schoolbook Illustrations “Study Arithmetic” 1947

Hard to imagine Women today still get paid less for the same job men

Lets Compare

Vintage Schoolbook Illustration “Learning Numbers” 1952

On average women today still earn just 77 cents for every dollar that men earn- a mere 17 cents on the dollar increase since the Equal Pay Act was enacted over 50 years ago in 1963.

Vintage schoolbook Illustration

The figures are more dismal for women of color. An African-American woman is paid 64 cents and Latinas only 54 cents as compared to white men.

Changing Numbers Around

Vintage Schoolbook Illustration “Arithmetic We Need” 1955

Despite the figures, he Republicans continue to downplay and debate the idea of an income inequality.

Making Equal Parts

Vintage Schoolbook Illustration “Study Arithmetic” 1947

Today when President Obama calls on Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act these images are surely dated but no more so than the fact that a gender wage gap still exists in 2014.

If the seed of the American Dream was planted during the dark days of the Depression, germinated at the New York Worlds Fair of 1939, it was nurtured and cultivated during the sacrifices and deprivations of WWII. By wars end

If the seed of the American Dream was planted during the dark days of the Depression, germinated at the New York Worlds Fair of 1939, it was nurtured and cultivated during the sacrifices and deprivations of WWII. By wars end

Though it would be my parents generation, those who lived through the Great Depression and later rolled up their collective sleeves, pitched in and sacrificed for the greater good in their fight against tyranny-who would be knighted by Tom Brokaw

Though it would be my parents generation, those who lived through the Great Depression and later rolled up their collective sleeves, pitched in and sacrificed for the greater good in their fight against tyranny-who would be knighted by Tom Brokaw

For over half a century, Americans soaring confidence had always promised a sugar-frosted future filled with frost free fun and abundance and economic prosperity. But that Buoyant bubble of optimism has since gone bust. Along with our jobs, retirement funds

For over half a century, Americans soaring confidence had always promised a sugar-frosted future filled with frost free fun and abundance and economic prosperity. But that Buoyant bubble of optimism has since gone bust. Along with our jobs, retirement funds

American Dream Foreclosed Whether a split level or a McMansion, the American Home has been the very embodiment of the American Dream. Once the mark of achievement, the suburban home was a solid investment, the guarantee of a secure future.

American Dream Foreclosed Whether a split level or a McMansion, the American Home has been the very embodiment of the American Dream. Once the mark of achievement, the suburban home was a solid investment, the guarantee of a secure future.